Reply Day
by The Talentless Hack
Summary: CM-verse, sequel to "Love Is Evol." "He figured that Tokio wouldn't mind chocolate, but he refused, on principle, to give her most of what he saw in shop windows. It was all cute to the point of obnoxiousness, and Saitou had standards, dammit."


**Happy White Day, Faithful Readership!**

**I am SUPER effin' late.**

I apologize. I overestimated my ability to balance school with more enjoyable pursuits (e.g., what you're currently reading, among others). But, I finally made it, even if I am over a month past an acceptable White Day offering. Maybe next year, to quote a certain Wolf we all know and love. ; )

Next chapter of _Captain Mis_…to be announced. I'm working on it. It's like pulling teeth, but I am working on it (Methinks I've been away far too long. Saaaaaad faaaaaace). To help me get back into that _CM_ groove, I decided to write up the logical reply to Tokio's first Valentine's Day gift to Saitou.

So yes, this is a sequel to "Love Is Evol" from _eons_ (read: three years) ago.

It came to me a few days before V-Day (lol), and I decided to start working on it then, so I could be super-productive both here and school-wise (clearly, I failed).

Apparently, you _can_ teach an old Hack new tricks. How well the old Hack takes to them is something else entirely, lol.

Enjoy Saitou's Callback!

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Disclaimer: Not mine, not now, not ever.

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_Reply Day_

_XoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoX_

For better or worse, Saitou rejected taking note of asinine things like holidays.

It was his opinion that very few of them were all that good or interesting anyway, and since he was already usually working, he didn't see the point in celebrating.

So he hadn't been keeping track of what day it was—holiday-wise—and was thus unpleasantly surprised to open the door to the office he shared with the idiots he worked with, and see his desk _covered_ in a mountain of chocolate and sickeningly sweet-looking stuffed animals asking that he be theirs, or barring that, for kisses.

"GODDAMMIT OKITA!" he roared, turning on his heel to go hunting his stupid friend.

He almost mowed Kenshin down, and the little redhead was bewildered until he looked into the office.

"Oh gods in hell," he muttered, rubbing a hand over his face.

"What did he do…oh," Aoshi said, surveying the atrocity in stunned silence. "Wow," he said finally. "That is an _offensive_ amount of pink."

"_Why_ does he do this?" Kenshin asked no one in particular, his voice despairing.

"_How_ he can do this is a better question," Aoshi said, ambling over to the pile on Saitou's desk for a closer look. "This has to cost a small fortune—this amount of choco isn't cheap."

"It is when you have connec~tions," Okita singsonged from the doorway, and Kenshin and Aoshi looked over to find him leaning against the jam, arms crossed over his chest, and a huge smile on his face as he appraised his handiwork. "Isn't it beautiful?" he asked with a sigh. "And to think, it only took an hour to get it perfect."

"You're not well," Kenshin said, shaking his head. "He's going to _kill_ you when he finds you, Okita."

"He has to find me first," Okita said with a snort.

"_He_ already has," Saitou ground out from right behind him, and Kenshin and Aoshi saw the blood drain from Okita's face.

"Well shit," Okita said, before he dove into the room and tried to scramble over desktops and draw Saitou away from the door so that he could escape.

Lucky for him, Saitou did move into the room. Unluckily, he only moved into the room enough to slam the door shut with his foot.

"Double shit," Okita said from where he crouched on his desk, eyes darting around the room, looking for a way out.

"This one knows nothing and has no opinion," Kenshin said immediately, and Aoshi nodded and gestured to the redhead with his thumb.

"What he said," he said.

Saitou ignored them, his narrowed amber gaze on Okita.

"All right, you miserable little asshole," he said in a deadly voice. "You're going to get all of that shit off of my desk. I don't care if you eat all of it until it gives you the runs, I want it _fucking gone_. And when it is, I am breaking my foot off in your skinny little ass!"

"But Haji!" Okita whined. "It's White Day! I'm just showing you that I appreciate you as a friend!"

"By dumping a bunch of pink shit all over my goddamn desk?" Saitou bellowed.

"It's all dark choco," Okita pointed out.

"It's all leaving this fucking office, Okita!"

"See if I ever get you anything ever again," Okita muttered churlishly, and for a second, it looked like Saitou was going to make a dive for him and strangle him, with extreme prejudice.

Kenshin breathed a sigh of relief when Saitou's stance shifted into something less aggressive…and then yelped and ducked when his superior officer leapt over him to swipe at Okita with his nightstick, which Kenshin had not noticed the taller man slipping from his belt.

Okita managed to avoid what promised to be a very painful hit with a yelp. Aoshi made his way to where Kenshin was standing, off to the side and out of the immediate line of fire, although depending on where Okita moved next, that could quickly change.

"Get over here and let me smack you!" Saitou demanded.

"_NOOOOO!_" Okita wailed, ducking again.

Kenshin sighed.

"This one is just getting way too old for this shit," he mumbled.

_XoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoX_

By lunchtime, all of the chocolate and the stuffed animals were gone, and Saitou had personally overseen the process to make damn sure that there were no fluffy survivors lurking anywhere in his immediate vicinity.

Consequently, most of the men in Criminal Investigations with significant others got bonus chocolates and stuffed animals (or a way of saving their asses, if they hadn't already taken care of it)…courtesy of the hardest screw in the department, though Okita was the one doing the handing out.

Hijikata stayed out of it, except to raise hell about how goddamn sick he was of Saitou and Okita interrupting the smooth running of his department. Saitou ignored his boss' yelling, for the most part, which was how he usually dealt with Hijikata yelling at him. Okita always whined, which just pissed Hijikata off worse, but both officers knew their boss, as angry as he could get with them, would commit ritual suicide before he fired them. They _did_ get away with a lot of shit, but that was because Hijikata considered them some of the best officers in the department, and most people were inclined to agree.

For all their madcap insanity sometimes, Saitou's team always got fabulous results.

Once The Atrocity had been righted, Saitou didn't give another thought to what day it was.

At least not until he had walked out of the Bunkyo Ward Police Station, and realized that not only was today White Day, but he owed Tokio chocolate.

"God-fucking-dammit," Saitou growled, jerking his hat onto his head. "I should have kept a fucking box."

_XoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoX_

His time was running out.

Saitou was at a loss. He figured that Tokio wouldn't mind chocolate—possibly milk chocolate, since that's what she'd given him a month before, and it stood to reason she would have given him what she liked, in the absence of knowledge about his preferences—but he refused, on principle, to give her most of what he saw in shop windows. It was all cute to the point of obnoxiousness, and Saitou had standards, dammit.

And an aggressively pink box of chocolates with a winking Hello Kitty on it wasn't even in the running.

This process was taking too long, and he was starting to get a little nervous. If he missed her today, it might make things awkward. He had noticed how tense she had been before she had given him the chocolate on Valentine's Day (there wasn't much about his Chiisai he missed), and he didn't want to give her the wrong impression.

Valentine's Day had been excellent progress in their weird relationship-that-wasn't-quite-a-relationship, and he didn't want to do anything to discourage that.

_All right jackoff_, Saitou thought to himself, narrowing his eyes. _Get your shit together, and pull something out of your ass for Chiisai, or you'll be apologizing for this for at least a month, if you're lucky. Which you aren't, __ever__, so this has to come together __right__now__._

He almost missed the shop, because it was the one storefront on the street that was utterly devoid of any White Day frippery. Which should have meant that it immediately stood out, but Saitou hadn't considered this shop's wares as appropriate…until he remembered one of their (many) silly arguments from some years ago.

"Now this has possibilities," he murmured as he opened the door, and absently hoped that the cheery little bells that chimed above his head as he ducked in were an omen of good fortune.

_XoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoX_

Shiori sent him a _look_ when he blew into the luncheonette trying not to look like he was in a hurry to get there, or aware of the fact that he had kept a certain adorable little executive waiting. His answering glare had her rolling her eyes, but she murmured something to Tokio and then moved on.

Saitou sidled up next to Tokio, who had tucked into her curry rice lunch now that Shiori wasn't distracting her.

"I don't know why you bother with inferior food choices, Chiisai," he said dryly, and Tokio sighed and sent him a flat look out of the corner of her eye.

"Hi Saitou-san," she said. "You're in fine form today, I see."

"_Oh?_" he asked, lowering his voice and leaning into her personal space bubble, and she stiffened immediately. "Admiring my _form_, are we?"

"Knock it off, _degenerate_," she said through gritted teeth, and Saitou chuckled but backed off.

He reached into his coat and fingered his White Day offering, making sure it hadn't suffered for its hiding place.

They went back and forth for a bit in the usual way, and Saitou put in his usual order, paid for it, and then waited for Tokio to finish her lunch before grabbing his own and walking her out.

He absolutely refused to do this in front of Shiori, because he didn't want to have to deal with the older woman's smirking later. He had no illusions that this story wouldn't eventually reach her ears, but she'd get it secondhand, and he could deal with the "secondhand smirk." But the "firsthand smirk" was an entirely different beast altogether, one that he was damned if he was going to subject himself to.

"By the way," he said, deciding to just get it over with, because there was no way he was going to be able to be smooth about this. "I noticed that today was White Day."

Tokio laughed.

"You _noticed_?" she asked, amused.

He shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "Kinda hard not to, with all the pink shit everywhere."

She sighed and shook her head, but she was smiling still, so he was willing to overlook it.

"Your powers of observation are unmatched, Saitou-san," she said.

"It's why I get paid the big money," he said dryly, and she laughed. "Anyway, since today's White Day, I owe you."

He didn't miss the expression that crossed her face—as if she wasn't exactly looking forward to getting something—but it disappeared so quickly that he was half-convinced he'd dreamed it up. In any case, she watched him expectantly, and Saitou reached into his coat pocket and withdrew his offering.

And had the pleasure of watching her face melt into amazement.

He held out a small origami rose made out of two different types of washi paper: a green one that had a bamboo pattern on it for the stem, and a pale lavender one that had a fan pattern on it for the bloom.

The paper had not been cheap. The shop he'd stopped in had specialized in high-quality papers and writing materials, and just on these two small sheets of washi, he had spent way more yen than he was likely to spend for the rest of the month on his lunch. But it was worth the cost to see the absolutely stunned look on Tokio's face as she stared at the rose.

"I figured this'd keep better than choco," he said, smiling faintly, inordinately pleased with his solution.

"Di-did-you—you _made_ that?" she asked, finally looking up at him and meeting his gaze.

"Yeah," he said, offering it to her, and she blushed but accepted the token as carefully as if it were a real rose, and when her fingers brushed against his gloves he wished—powerfully—that he had not had to work today, and was in his civvies.

_Maybe next year_, he thought ruefully.

She examined the rose in detail for several long moments, then looked up at him, expression vaguely disgruntled.

"I hate you," she muttered, and he laughed.

"I can teach you how to make one," he offered, rocking back on his heels.

"And have you _lord_ it over me? No thank you," she said snootily, and he chuckled. She sent him a shy, delighted look then, and smiled. "Thank you, Saitou-san. It's lovely."

"You're welcome," he said, and then before he second-guessed himself, he added, "It was my pleasure."

He decided it had been worth it when she beamed at him.

They said their goodbyes and parted ways, and Saitou dragged his feet and watched her over his shoulder, warmth flooding through him when he saw her tuck the rose behind her ear before she kept on going on her way.

Saitou went through the rest of the day with a smirk on his face, and if it scared or prompted wary or panicked double-takes from his coworkers, he was totally okay with that.

Because not only had he pleased his Chiisai, he was scaring Okita positively _shitless_ expecting retribution, and as far as Saitou was concerned, it all added up to a damn fine day.

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**A/N:** In the language of flowers, a lavender or purple rose symbolizes love at first sight. Originally, I had the idea to have our favorite Wolf give his Chiisai a blue rose, but that symbolizes the unattainable (as a direct cause of blue roses not being found in nature), and while that would have fit as well, ultimately, that rose doesn't also embody the same hopeful tone that the lavender one does—after all, what is love if not a hopeful endeavor? :D


End file.
